The last bite

Musical tooth numbering

Hardly had the ink dried on my recent items on gold and celebrity teeth when two follow-up stories crept into the press. Regular readers will recall that one of John Lennon’s molars (extracted while he was alive) had been sold at auction to a Canadian dentist for £19K, but it now seems that in Austria a thief has desecrated the graves of Johann Strauss and Johannes Brahms and stolen teeth of the famous composers.

While it is thought that the thefts have been perpetrated in order to put the teeth into a museum, it does seem a very farfetched method of representing classical music. Not even Gareth Malone of television’s The Choir fame has yet hit on the idea of a chorus of dead singers and musicians.

Meanwhile, in a move that is distinctly macabre but in these times of financial squeeze not entirely unsurprising, it is reported that some city councils in Germany are recycling gold teeth after cremations in order to raise cash for the public purse. What Euro crisis?